- What the 19-Line Domain List Actually Is
- Identity Check: CSWAP-SU, CSWPA-SU, and CSWP-SU
- How the Exam Is Delivered
- Curves and Splines: Domains 1, 2, 17, and 18
- Surface Creation Tools: Domains 3 to 7 and 16
- Editing and Repair: Domains 8 to 12 and 15
- Solid Finishing: Domains 13, 14, and 19
- Checks That Cut Across Every Domain
- Sequencing the 18 Distinct Topics
- Fee, Registration, and Retake Mechanics
- Where the Credential Fits in Hiring
- Frequently Asked Questions
- The published coverage list has 19 lines but only 18 distinct topics; "Spline Creation" appears twice.
- The exam is 90 minutes, hands-on, with a 75% minimum passing grade.
- Candidates repair broken surface bodies and incorrect imported bodies rather than only building models from scratch.
- The 19 lines are unweighted skills, so do not assume equal exam time per domain.
What the 19-Line Domain List Actually Is
SOLIDWORKS publishes the coverage for this exam as a plain list of skills. It is not a weighted blueprint like those used by many IT or project-management certifications. There are no percentages attached, no official count of questions per area, and no statement that each line receives equal attention. Anyone telling you which domain is "worth the most points" is guessing.
That matters for how you study. Because nothing is weighted, the safe strategy is breadth with depth where surfacing is most failure-prone: knitting, trimming, thickening, and repairing imported geometry. Those are the operations where a small mistake silently breaks every feature downstream.
The list as published contains 19 lines. "Spline Creation" appears at position 1 and again at position 18, which leaves 18 distinct topic names. This guide keeps all 19 entries visible so you can match them against the issuer page, but treats the duplicate as one skill area with two mentions. For a broader orientation to the credential before diving into topics, see What Is CSWAP-SU?
Identity Check: CSWAP-SU, CSWPA-SU, and CSWP-SU
This site uses "CSWAP-SU" for Certified SOLIDWORKS Advanced Professional Surfacing. The issuer, SOLIDWORKS (Dassault Systèmes), currently markets the exam as SOLIDWORKS Surfacing Professional (CSWP-SU), and older material and the sample exam filename use the CSWPA-SU form. All three labels point to the same surfacing exam. If you are searching for a CSWPA-SU practice test, a CSWPA-SU study guide, or CSWP-SU exam details, you are looking at this same credential.
Be careful with the acronym outside this context. Other, unrelated certifications elsewhere use similar-looking abbreviations, and their fees, bodies, and formats have nothing to do with this exam. Everything below applies only to the SOLIDWORKS surfacing exam. For naming background, What Does CSWAP-SU Stand For? covers the alias history in more detail.
How the Exam Is Delivered
The verified format facts are short and worth memorizing:
- Style: hands-on advanced surface creation and repair of broken surface bodies or incorrect imported bodies.
- Duration: 90 minutes.
- Minimum passing grade: 75%.
- Software: SOLIDWORKS 2017 or later is required to open the exam files. That is a compatibility minimum, not the year of an exam revision.
- Delivery: online through SOLIDWORKS/VirtualTester. Current instructions link the VirtualTester Web Client, while older material refers to Tangix or TesterPRO.
The issuer links a sample exam package from its certification page. We could not retrieve that package for inspection, so we do not describe its contents or question count here, and nothing in this article should be mistaken for official sample questions. If you build your own mock exercises, label them as practice material. For difficulty context, see How Hard Is the CSWAP-SU Exam? and for the score threshold see CSWAP-SU Passing Score.
Curves and Splines: Domains 1, 2, 17, and 18
Four of the 19 lines concern the curves that drive surfaces. Surface quality is limited by curve quality, so weak spline control shows up later as lumpy, twisted, or unfillable surfaces.
Domain 1 and Domain 18: Spline Creation
The topic appears twice in the published list, so treat it as a core skill rather than a footnote.
- Place splines with few control points; every extra point is a chance for a wobble.
- Know how to edit spline handles, tangency, and curvature so adjacent surfaces blend cleanly.
- Understand sketch-based splines versus splines on style or reference geometry.
Domain 2: 3D Curve Creation
Many surfacing features need curves that do not live on a single plane.
- Build 3D sketches and curves through reference points.
- Use projected and composite curves where the model calls for them.
- Keep curve endpoints coincident with the geometry they must touch, since near-misses cause failures later.
Domain 17: Guided Curves
Guide curves control how a surface behaves between its profiles.
- Know which features accept guide curves and what they constrain.
- Recognize when a guide curve must intersect every profile versus pierce them.
- Diagnose a guide-curve error by checking intersection and ordering before rebuilding.
Surface Creation Tools: Domains 3 to 7 and 16
This cluster covers the features that generate surface bodies. The most useful way to learn them is by comparison, because the exam tends to hand you a shape and expect you to pick the right tool.
| Domain | Best Used When | Typical Failure to Check |
|---|---|---|
| Boundary Surface | Two-direction control with curves or edges on all sides | Mismatched direction order or twisted connectors |
| Loft/Blend Surfaces | Transition between profiles along one primary direction | Wrong start points causing a twisted result |
| Filled Surface | Closing an n-sided hole with curvature or tangency conditions | Boundary not forming a closed, connected loop |
| Swept Surface | A profile moving along a path, optionally with guides | Self-intersection on tight path curvature |
| Planar Surface | Flat caps or flat patches from closed boundaries | Open or non-planar boundary |
| Ruled Surface Creation | Straight-line surfaces extending from edges | Wrong direction or distance reference |
Boundary Surface vs Loft
The pairing of Domain 3 and Domain 4 is where many candidates hesitate. Both can join profiles, but a boundary surface can take curve influence in two directions and offers tangency or curvature control at the ends in both. A loft is primarily one-directional and leans on guide curves for the second direction. When the task demands matching curvature on all sides, boundary is usually the intended answer. When you only need a simple transition between two or three profiles, a loft is quicker and less fragile.
Filled, Swept, Planar, and Ruled
Filled Surface is the go-to for patching holes in a repaired model, so expect it to appear in repair contexts. Swept Surface and Ruled Surface Creation are the straightforward generators; the trap is usually in the references you select, not the feature itself. Planar Surface is the simplest tool, but it fails quietly when a boundary is not truly closed or flat.
Editing and Repair: Domains 8 to 12 and 15
This is the heart of the exam's repair emphasis. These six lines describe how you modify, stitch, and clean up surface geometry.
Domain 8: Knit Surface
Knitting joins separate surfaces into one body and is a prerequisite for turning surfaces into solids.
- Know the difference between knitting for a surface body and knitting to form a solid.
- Understand gap tolerance and when merging entities is appropriate.
- Diagnose knit surface failure by hunting for gaps, overlaps, and edges that do not truly meet.
Domain 9 and Domain 10: Trim Surface and Untrim Surface
Trimming removes unwanted regions; untrimming restores original boundaries.
- Use standard trim versus mutual trim appropriately and keep or remove the correct pieces.
- Use untrim to reclaim original surface edges, useful when imported geometry has bad trim boundaries.
- Recognize that over-trimming and then patching is often worse than untrimming and re-trimming.
Domain 11: Move Face
Move Face edits geometry directly, which is common when fixing imported bodies that lack a feature history.
- Translate, rotate, or offset faces on bodies with no usable feature tree.
- Understand how adjacent faces heal or fail when one face is moved.
Domain 12: Extend Surface
Extending lets surfaces meet or intersect so they can be trimmed and knit.
- Choose the extension type that preserves the surface's natural shape.
- Extend only as far as needed; excess extension complicates later trims.
Domain 15: Offset Surface
Offsetting copies a surface at a distance, often to create clearance or wall geometry.
- Know the direction conventions and what happens when offset distance exceeds local curvature radius.
- Check that the offset result remains valid before building further on it.
If you only have limited prep time, spend extra of it here. A guided walk through typical failure modes is part of the plan in the CSWAP-SU Study Guide.
Solid Finishing: Domains 13, 14, and 19
Domain 13: Fillet
Filleting on surface-derived bodies behaves differently than on simple prismatic solids.
- Know which fillet types suit complex edges and when a failure is caused by geometry versus settings.
- Apply fillets at the right moment; some should wait until after thickening or knitting.
Domain 14: Thicken
Thicken converts a surface into a solid with wall thickness.
- Handle direction and thickness choices, including sides and merge options.
- Troubleshoot thicken failure: self-intersection from thickness exceeding curvature, bad surface quality, or gaps that prevent a closed result.
Domain 19: Split Solid Body
Splitting divides a solid using a surface or plane, useful for partitioning a model or isolating regions.
- Use a surface as the splitting tool and understand how resulting bodies are handled.
- Verify that the splitting surface fully crosses the body, or the split will not complete.
Checks That Cut Across Every Domain
Several habits are not listed as domains but decide whether a correct-looking model earns credit. Exam answers in this style are typically verified through measurable properties of the finished part, so check these before submitting each task:
- Units and precision: confirm the document units and decimal precision before reading any value. A right answer in the wrong unit is a wrong answer.
- Material assignment: mass depends on material, so make sure the specified material is applied before you evaluate mass.
- Surface area and mass checks: use Mass Properties and surface evaluation tools to confirm your result matches expectations and to catch silent errors such as a missing face.
- Body count and closure: verify you have the expected number of solid and surface bodies and that nothing remains open.
Key Takeaway
Build a short end-of-task ritual: units, material, body count, then mass and surface area. It takes under a minute and prevents the most avoidable point losses on a 90-minute clock.
Sequencing the 18 Distinct Topics
This is the one planning section, tied directly to the domain list. The order below follows dependency: curves feed surfaces, surfaces feed repair, repair feeds solids.
Curves first
- Spline Creation, 3D Curve Creation, and Guided Curves, because every later surface depends on them.
Surface generators
- Boundary, Loft/Blend, Filled, Swept, Planar, and Ruled. Practice boundary surface vs loft decisions side by side.
Repair and editing
- Knit, Trim, Untrim, Move Face, Extend, and Offset. Deliberately break models and fix them.
Finish and simulate
- Fillet, Thicken, and Split Solid Body, then full timed 90-minute runs with unit, material, and mass checks.
Because the issuer lists no weights, treat these weeks as dependency-ordered, not importance-ranked. For a fuller plan, see the CSWAP-SU Study Guide, and for a compact recall sheet use the CSWAP-SU Cheat Sheet. You can also pressure-test yourself with the CSWAP-SU practice tests.
Fee, Registration, and Retake Mechanics
- Fee: USD 20 in North America, covering one attempt. Other regions may differ, so confirm through the SOLIDWORKS Certification Program page.
- Prerequisites: Associate and Professional exams have no formal entry prerequisites. The exam page recommends SOLIDWORKS Design Essentials, Advanced Part Modeling, Advanced Surface Modeling, and its surfacing exam-preparation course, but these are preparation suggestions, not mandatory course hours.
- Retakes: at least 14 days between attempts, and each new attempt needs a fresh exam credit.
- Validity: customer and student certificates have no official expiration date.
No official pass rate has been verified, so be skeptical of any site quoting one. See CSWAP-SU Pass Rate for how to read such claims, CSWAP-SU Certification Cost for pricing detail, and CSWAP-SU Requirements for eligibility.
Where the Credential Fits in Hiring
Surfacing skill is most relevant in roles that handle complex, organic, or imported geometry: consumer product design, tooling and mold design, and engineering teams that receive third-party CAD data needing cleanup. A passing result signals that you can repair geometry, not just draw it. No certification-specific salary uplift has been verified, so treat claims of one cautiously. For a measured view, read Is the CSWAP-SU Certification Worth It? and CSWAP-SU Jobs.
Frequently Asked Questions
The published coverage list has 19 lines, but "Spline Creation" appears twice, so there are 18 distinct topics. The lines are unweighted skills, not 19 official weighted domains.
On this site, yes. The issuer currently presents the exam as SOLIDWORKS Surfacing Professional (CSWP-SU), with CSWPA-SU as an older or alternate alias for the same surfacing exam.
The exam runs 90 minutes and requires a minimum passing grade of 75%. It is a hands-on test involving surface creation and repair of broken or incorrectly imported bodies.
The fee is USD 20 in North America for one attempt. A retake requires waiting at least 14 days and purchasing a fresh exam credit.
No weighting is published, so none is officially higher. Many candidates find Knit Surface, Trim Surface, Thicken, and Filled Surface the most failure-prone, so give repair-oriented practice extra attention while covering all topics.